[cobalt-users] Re: Re: Re: whois...'nt.

[Charlie Summers <charlie@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 9:31 PM -0400 7/20/01, Carrie Bartkowiak is rumored to have typed:

> Two things you might not know, so forgive me if you do:
> 1. There is a backdoor in every Cobalt.

   *gasp* *sputter* *gulp*

   Anyone cracks the pizza box, whether from Sun or KiddieCrackerHeaven, and
I'll sue so fast their heads will spin. I'd almost rather Sun did it, since
they have more bucks than a fourteen-year-old.

   Of course, this means it is only a matter of time before the 14-year-olds
figure out how to run any/every RaQ and Qube on the planet. And I thought
Microsoft was bad.

   (DISCLAMER: The preceeding is to be read considering my curmudgeonly
humorous style, and is not to be taken as a legal threat to any corporation
or 14-year-old.)

> 2. Cobalt could not build a GUI that worked with RedHat and call it
> their own; restricting other people from using it and expanding on it
> - because it's open source.

   I'm not sure I agree with that; creating standard /var/named/domains files
when adding records to DNS shouldn't prevent the GUI from being copyrighted
under non-GPL copyright. (I know a couple of hosting companies who have
written their own server interfaces which are protected under non-GPL
license...so long as the programs don't interface with the source of the
existing _code,_ there shouldn't be an issue in working with the standard
config files. (I can show you a couple, but since I'm not supposed to have
them in the first place, I'd have to give you amnesiacs afterwards anyway.)

   That is, creating or editing standard configuration files, while not
altering the source code of the daemons themselves, shouldn't create a
derivitive work as defined under GPL. (Code changes to the daemons themselves
might be forced into the open-source arena, but the sections which change the
config files should be completely safe.)

> You've got some new evidence here... thinking any differently?

   Liking it a whole lot less, yeah.

> That's true - thinking of dumping your Cobalt blues?  ;)

   I have too good a deal on the bandwidth to dump it, d*mnitall.

   BTW, if you know anything at all about the innards of the way the RaQ3
handles email, check out the "help" posting I'm making directly. (*sigh*)
Mail is broken on the d*mned machine, and the slime...er...sauce is (I
assume) to blame. (I think sendmail is doing what it would normally do on a
non-Cobalt machine, gumming up the works.) I can't find anything in the
archives even approximating this particular problem, so it may be caused by
my installing the RealServer, or maybe because I installed the wrong whois
replacement.  ;)

         Charlie